Entertainment

Review: Pogoplug Software Creates a Personal Computing Cloud

Pogoplug started its life as hardware — plug a USB drive into it and access files from anywhere. Now, there's a software version of Pogoplug, substituting your Windows, Mac or Linux machine for that hardware and letting you share pictures, music, videos and data with any of your devices or with anyone else. Let's try it.

Downloading and installing the Pogoplug software is quick and simple. You can get the free version which lets you remotely access all the content on your computer, essentially turning your PC into your own personal cloud.

The $29 Pogoplug Premium version lets you do all that, plus it has the ability to stream media from your computer to your iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone, all three of which have free Pogoplug apps available. Or, you can access everything from any computer with a web browser by going to your account at Pogoplug.com.

Once the Pogoplug server software is installed on your computer, it finds all your photos, music, and video, as well as data in your Desktop and Documents folder. After a few minutes, I loaded the free iPhone app and iPad app on those two devices, and suddenly I wasw streaming music, video and files with ease.

This could hardly get any easier. Movies played smoothly even over AT&T's 3G network, and on the iPhone and iPad, they looked slightly grainy but watchable. In addition, it was easy to share files with anyone with an email address with a few taps on a touchscreen.

There are drawbacks. For one thing, only certain types of video files are recognized. For instance, .AVI and .MOV files play back quickly and look good, where the computer is converting them to the Pogoplug's streaming file format. However, file formats such as the popular .MKV are not recognized as video. You can share them with whomever you like — however, they won't stream.

Music streamed particularly well on the iPhone and iPad, sounding just as good as it did when played directly from the PC. However, you don't get that same iPod interface you normally do on the iPhone, but a bare subset that's Spartan yet functional.

Uh-oh. Perhaps the worst drawback I noticed was the instability of Pogoplug's iPhone and iPad applications. About half the time, when I'd try to share a file or start playing video, the app would inexplicably shut down. That's just not acceptable.

Verdict: Pogoplug is a great idea, and the fact that you don't need to buy a $200 hardware device to use its convenient features makes it even more attractive. However, in my testing, the associated software doesn't feel ready yet. Its instability marred its powerful capabilities, rendering Pogoplug almost unusable.

You might want to try the free version first, and see if it's stable on your combination of devices. Wait before you spend your $29, and hopefully in the meantime Pogoplug will fix those bugs residing in its apps for iPhone and iPad.

Pogoplug Software

First Screen

Pogoplug asks you to designate which folders will be available via remote access.

Software Tour

You can turn off remote access.

Desktop Access

You can control everything from your PC, Mac, or Linux machine.

Web Access

If you have web access, you have access to your files.

Mobile Devices

Unfortunately, the iPhone and iPad apps are pretty shaky thus far.

Great Way to Share Files

Hey, this is almost as good as Dropbox.

Premium Feature

here's what you pay your $29 for, but it doesn't work very well yet.

Pogoplug Hardware

Buy the Pogoplug hardware device, and you don't need to keep your computer running when you want to access your files remotely.

Drop-Down Menu

From the web, you can perform lots of file management functions, as well as share files or or publish photos to Facebook.

iPhone App

Here's the splash screen of the Pogoplug iPhone app.

iPhone App

Look at all you can do.

Video Directory

Those dates don't make it easy to find a video. One big file would have been ideal.

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